So, Overwatch seems to be the Game De Jour at the moment. I just started playing last night, and I'm already a little bit addicted. I'm not very good at it. But once in a while, the planets align, and everything falls into place to pull off a cheeky quintuple kill and get my first ever Play of the Game.

From what I can gather, there are a lot of people out there who have been playing this thing in the beta, and thus benefit from a great deal of experience. There's a lot of theory-crafting information out there which I can't begin to absorb. Like, which heroes can counter which. What you should change to if the enemy team have X, Y, and Z in their line-up. How and when to use abilities. Combos with other team-mates. I've got about as far as "Pick the one you like the look of, and run around shooting at red people".

SlyReaper wrote:I just started playing last night, and I'm already a little bit addicted. I'm not very good at it

The latter will improve. Not sure about the former.

The two most important things to learn are: 1.) A kill doesn't mean anything if it doesn't further the objective 2.) Don't trickle in. Stick together (but don't cluster (unless behind Rein's shield (and even then it might a bad idea))).

Oh yeah, I got that straight away. Doesn't stop me feeling like a boss when I get a lot of kills though.

As for trickling in, I worked that one out early too. But I've been playing with randoms. It's frustrating to see them all rush off alone into the enemy's meat grinder, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Weeks wrote:If it's anything like a MOBA, you just need a loooooot of patience, because it takes a loooooong time to get good at a game like that (this counts for your teammates, oh and your enemies as well).

"Unrealistic" class-based shooters existed since "Starship Tribes"... and of course Team Fortress in 1999. Its like Dota is invented and everything is a MOBA now.

Not trying to be aggressive btw. But a lot of people are calling this a MOBA for some reason. Imagine that my comment above is directed at "the internet in general" and not to you specifically. In any case, the team-based shooter is basically the most bread-and-butter of modern games. MAG, Battlefront, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2... lots and lots of games in this field. Glad to see that Blizzard is joining the fray but Overwatch really should be compared with other games in its genre.

raudorn wrote:The two most important things to learn are: 1.) A kill doesn't mean anything if it doesn't further the objective 2.) Don't trickle in. Stick together (but don't cluster (unless behind Rein's shield (and even then it might a bad idea))).

I think this depends a lot on who you are playing. There are characters (like Tracer) who have the express purpose of running off on their own and being a nuisance. These characters are really only good in 1v1 fights, especially when they show up where they aren't expected to. The goal is of course still to help your team, but they do their best work behind enemy lines. A sniper that's busy fending off Tracer isn't killing your guys.

I edit my posts a lot and sometimes the words wrong order words appear in sentences get messed up.

Exactly. I was more thinking about the habit (I'm sometimes guilty myself) of people just running around the map in search of enemies and then proceeding to duel them. Yes, technically any kill reduces the enemy team's effectiveness for about half a minute, but assuming equal player skill, your own team is weaker for the duration of your engagement outside the objective as well. So it better be a meaningful kill.

How the different heros accomplish that is of course another matter. 6 Tracers can work only if at least one of them is doing non-Tracer things like standing on the payload trying not to be killed. 6 Reinhardts can work only if at least one of them is doing non-Reinhardt things like hunting down enemies that are shredding your teamates' shields. Given 21 heros, there are, um, significantly more than 50 shades of grey here, of course, but the principle stands.

In lighter news, I got the elusive Lifesaver POTG on my first time with Symmetra. Sadly, it was basically just my turrets killing Mey after I was frozen, but before the inevitable headshot.

I seem to have a high enough MMR that I'm now being matched with people that are significantly better than myself (or maybe it's level based? I did just hit level 11). I'm not new to FPS games at all, though it has been a while since I really got into one as much as I'm getting into OW.

Prior to level 10, I was doing really well. I tend to play as Lucio, Pharah, and either Symmetra or Torbjon the most, rotating through depending on what the match needs and what map it is. The teams I played with won a lot more games than I lost.

Now that I'm level 10 (I think I just dinged 11) I've played at least 15 matches and my teams have only won 2 of them. It seems every match now I come up against some other player (or players) who just completely dominate, who are just better than I am. A Widowmaker perched way high up who gets 4 headshots in quick succession, or a Junkrat who knows the maps well enough to tell where and when to bounce grenades around corners, or a Reaper who knows the hiding holes for flanking and health pack locations and how to disengage to regroup (seriously, I died at least 15 times in one match to this single fucking Reaper, he was a god).

It's probably just a matter of me needing to "git gud" (to steal a popular Dark Souls term) and learn the maps and the character strengths and weaknesses if I'm being honest, but I wish there was more of a gradient between "win 75% of the time" to "lose 90% of the time".

But I'm still having fun, so that's really what counts. Despite losing, I want to get back in and try again.

Also, wall riding as Lucio is hellaciously fun. No one ever looks up to try and target characters unless they know there's a Pharah around, and keeping a high vantage point allows some nice potshots at certain parts of maps while still allowing you to heal your team with your aura.

The story so far:In the beginning the Universe was created.This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

Unlike games like Dark Souls which has very clear feedback, Overwatch has pretty bad feedback on whether you're playing well. The relative skill and composition of your teams is largely out of your hands. Especially with low-level PUGs, it's very common to end up in poorly composed teams (usually extremely heavy on snipers and glass-cannon offense characters). That sort of a composition isn't very good and will die to a more well balanced team of inferior skill.

If the rest of your team is doing what they should be doing, you will die less and and get more kill participation as a result. If they aren't doing what they should be doing, you're much more likely to face overwhelming odds, and will spend most of the game dying. This gives the illusion of changes in your performance, even though that can reasonably assumed to not shift wildly from group to group.

I find the best way of measuring the quality of my team is how often I see my team mates. If I keep ending up alone in 1v4 fights near the objective because everyone scattered like startled cats, that's usually not a failure on my part.

I edit my posts a lot and sometimes the words wrong order words appear in sentences get messed up.

You, sir, name? wrote:Unlike games like Dark Souls which has very clear feedback, Overwatch has pretty bad feedback on whether you're playing well. The relative skill and composition of your teams is largely out of your hands.

This seems to be true of all team-based games.

Rocket League comes to mind. You get an all-star player in one match, and it becomes easy as pie. If you don't look at the replays and notice that some crazy dude was doing mid-air flips after a hover to score a goal was on your team... you will not really know that your own personal skill had little to do with the game.

Team positioning and coordination are big. That's why serious gamers set up clans on voice-chat, so that you can start controlling the team variable.

Who probably got it from another game, but that's the first one I'm thinking of, unless this game type is completely different from Domination.

I was originally going to say "Unreal Tournament" in my post earlier, but Starsiege Tribes had a "Capture and Hold" mode and predates Unreal by a single year.

My knowledge of FPS games gets very very hazy going earlier than that. The earliest multiplayer shooter game I'm aware of is "BZFlag" with a public release in 1993, and had a large following through the late 90s internet. Wikipedia notes a "king of the hill" capture-and-hold mode, but I admit that my experience with the game was definitely more with the capture-the-flag game.

Overwatch adds "supers" to the classic capture-and-hold positional game mode, but even BZFlag had rare items that pop up and allow for a push (and Starsiege Tribes had expensive items that would, in effect, act as supers. Like purchasing vehicles, or deployable forward ammo stations / turrets and such. Fast, armored movement is a big deal for Capture-the-flag, and position control / bases with ammo stations helped teams. )

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I was curious enough to venture back into shooters with "Splatoon". (Nintendo's team-based shooter). Then I got motion sick and remembered why I stopped playing these games. Overwatch looks fun, and I like Blizzard. But FPS and even 3rd-person shooters are migraine generators for me.

Speaking of game-types that aren't done much anymore... when was the last time a good capture-the-flag shooter came out? Like Halo 2, right?

A CTF map in Overwatch would be really cool. But I think the reason there isn't one at launch is because the designers know it would put too much focus on the mobility heroes. I mean, who would play Torbjörn or Symmetra on CTF? Doesn't make sense. I think CTF is inherently harder to balance than the other game modes.

Koa wrote:Mobility comes from abilities, which could be disabled if you have the flag.

There are two flags in CTF. Red flag and Blue flag. Red team defends red flag, blue team defends blue flag. When the flag is captured, the flag then teleports back to the defense-team's base.

Honestly, a speedy character like Tracer would be broken in CTF mode. Mobility is king. You want to get in and out. Overwatch would likely be a terrible, terrible CTF game. The abilities were designed with the capture-and-hold principle in mind.

If the opponent grabs your flag and then camps... just grab their flag 20 times. Then you win.

raudorn wrote:I mean, who would play Torbjörn or Symmetra on CTF? Doesn't make sense. I think CTF is inherently harder to balance than the other game modes.

I don't think its "harder to balance", as much as it is "different to balance". When you consider the amount of effort that Blizzard put forth to balance the current maps: multiple paths, chokepoints for defensive characters, etc. etc. so that the overall class balance is good...

Koa wrote:Mobility comes from abilities, which could be disabled if you have the flag.

There are two flags in CTF. Red flag and Blue flag. Red team defends red flag, blue team defends blue flag. When the flag is captured, the flag then teleports back to the defense-team's base.

Honestly, a speedy character like Tracer would be broken in CTF mode. Mobility is king. You want to get in and out. Overwatch would likely be a terrible, terrible CTF game. The abilities were designed with the capture-and-hold principle in mind.

Genji and Tracer are the only heroes with an increased movement speed. A simple balance would be to drop their speed to the same as everyone else when holding the flag (as well as disabling their abilities)

If the opponent grabs your flag and then camps... just grab their flag 20 times. Then you win.

Some CTF games require your team's flag to be at your base in order for you to cap. Although that would probably turn the game from "push in and get the flag out as quickly as possible" to "Attempt to mount an assault on the enemy's flag-carrying Roadhog while defending your flag-carrying Roadhog".

raudorn wrote:I mean, who would play Torbjörn or Symmetra on CTF? Doesn't make sense. I think CTF is inherently harder to balance than the other game modes.

Why would people play the characters whose specialization is setting up automated sentry turrets meant for defending areas from attackers, in a game mode where the primary goal is to defend an area from attack? I have no idea.

gmalivuk wrote:

King Author wrote:If space (rather, distance) is an illusion, it'd be possible for one meta-me to experience both body's sensory inputs.

Yes. And if wishes were horses, wishing wells would fill up very quickly with drowned horses.

Sizik wrote:Why would people play the characters whose specialization is setting up automated sentry turrets meant for defending areas from attackers, in a game mode where the primary goal is to defend an area from attack? I have no idea.

Because as Tjorbjörn I'd either be constanly sitting in the flag room, making my team weaker in a charge/carrier hunt, or I'd be following them, having to fight constantly in a new area without my turret. I don't see the benefit. With the other map types, there's always a frontline I can be bolstering. WIth CTF there is no frontline.

Sizik wrote:Why would people play the characters whose specialization is setting up automated sentry turrets meant for defending areas from attackers, in a game mode where the primary goal is to defend an area from attack? I have no idea.

Because as Tjorbjörn I'd either be constanly sitting in the flag room, making my team weaker in a charge/carrier hunt, or I'd be following them, having to fight constantly in a new area without my turret. I don't see the benefit. With the other map types, there's always a frontline I can be bolstering. WIth CTF there is no frontline.

Why? Can pretty much leave turret (or 6, if you're Symmetra) and then go join the fray. Torbjörn:s DPS should not be underestimated. He hits like a damn freight train. Leaving turrets would effectively shut down tracer or genji run-bys, as they evaporate rather quickly to static defenses.

I edit my posts a lot and sometimes the words wrong order words appear in sentences get messed up.

I've picked up this game as well, and I have to say, it is a lot of fun. I need to find some friends to play with though, I imagine that's even more fun.

I hate the weirdest game tonight. Right at the start three people picked junkrat. Then the rest of us decided to roll with it, so we ended up with 6 junkrats on the team. I had never played that hero before, but it was insane. Just endless streams of grenades from all sides, the enemy had no idea what hit them.

I'm sure a high level and coordinated opponent can counter it. But at the level I was playing, it was insane fun.

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister

Koa wrote:Mobility comes from abilities, which could be disabled if you have the flag.

There are two flags in CTF. Red flag and Blue flag. Red team defends red flag, blue team defends blue flag. When the flag is captured, the flag then teleports back to the defense-team's base.

Honestly, a speedy character like Tracer would be broken in CTF mode. Mobility is king. You want to get in and out. Overwatch would likely be a terrible, terrible CTF game. The abilities were designed with the capture-and-hold principle in mind.

Genji and Tracer are the only heroes with an increased movement speed. A simple balance would be to drop their speed to the same as everyone else when holding the flag (as well as disabling their abilities)

It would mean that you wouldn't want to run the flag with Tracer, but she would be an ideal chaser. An Ideal flag runner would be Torbjörn, 76, Zarya, etc. I would guess Reinhardt wouldn't be so great at it.

You, sir, name? wrote:Huh. I played against a mass junkrat team a few hours ago. Route 66?

My allies were really salty about it

No it was on Dorado. Which is probably one of the better maps for junkrat.

SlyReaper wrote:I feel like a team of all one character can be good for the initial push, because they won't see it coming. After the first wipe though, swap to a more balanced team, because the enemy will adapt.

Yeah like I said, they probably could have countered it if they were good. They did sort of try it. One of them went Pharah and that was very annoying. Two of them went Reinhardt. According to the wiki Reinhardt counters Junkrat, but it felt more like the other way around. Easy to lob grenades over his shield. Or put some traps in his way so he can't move.

Anyway, I'm not claiming 6 junkrats is good strategy. But it was insane fun. And that's a win in my book.

And yeah, 6 the same heroes might work for an initial push, as long as you are willing to switch away from it quickly.

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister

Yeah, Reinhardt is a pretty dodgy Junkrat counter, since his shield melts pretty quickly to the egg timers (or whatever it is he throws o_O). People frequently go Junkrat to explicitly to counter Reinhardt.

Pharrah would indeed probably be better, since Junkrat really can't do a damn thing about a flying opponent. Maybe add in a widowmaker or two too for good measure. Basically anything that's far away and high up makes Junkrat sad.

Another build that's fun/terrifying on koth maps is planet of the apes (Something like 4 Winstons, Soldier 76 and Lucio). You cannot be in the same room as 4 Winstons and live to tell the tale. The apes all flying at the incoming enemy push and ulting was also something to behold.

I edit my posts a lot and sometimes the words wrong order words appear in sentences get messed up.

I got into a losing game today. One of my team mates complained that he was the only one trying to push the objective. On the post game screen, I got gold medal for objective time. It was about 40 seconds. It would have been more, but I joined mid-match.

Glass houses, my grumpy friend. Glass houses.

Today I learned I suck at playing Mercy. It's a crying shame, because I got the Devil skin in a loot box, and it's beautiful, and it makes me want to play as Mercy all the time now. But yeah, I seem to keep forgetting how squishy she is, and get picked off when I try and stay in helping range of the team-mate I'm supporting, when they jump on the objective.

I think Mercy is about sustain and healing the back lines. I don't think you should be pushing with the heavy à la TF2. You should have multiple teammates around you that you can fly to to avoid fire (hold jump to float), and they should help if you get targeted. Let people die if it means saving yourself, because of the ult. That means don't follow someone if it's going to put you into too much danger. However, Mercy isn't going to be too useful if the team isn't sticking together. There's no solution for that.

Koa wrote:Or a Hanzo complaining that no one on their team is playing a healer.

Honest to God I wish I could ban my own team from playing him. His ult doesn't make up for the utter hole he leaves in the team because most people really aren't good enough with him to make up for it.

Obby wrote:I seem to have a high enough MMR that I'm now being matched with people that are significantly better than myself (or maybe it's level based? I did just hit level 11). I'm not new to FPS games at all, though it has been a while since I really got into one as much as I'm getting into OW.

Prior to level 10, I was doing really well. I tend to play as Lucio, Pharah, and either Symmetra or Torbjon the most, rotating through depending on what the match needs and what map it is. The teams I played with won a lot more games than I lost.

Now that I'm level 10 (I think I just dinged 11) I've played at least 15 matches and my teams have only won 2 of them. It seems every match now I come up against some other player (or players) who just completely dominate, who are just better than I am. A Widowmaker perched way high up who gets 4 headshots in quick succession, or a Junkrat who knows the maps well enough to tell where and when to bounce grenades around corners, or a Reaper who knows the hiding holes for flanking and health pack locations and how to disengage to regroup (seriously, I died at least 15 times in one match to this single fucking Reaper, he was a god).

It's probably just a matter of me needing to "git gud" (to steal a popular Dark Souls term) and learn the maps and the character strengths and weaknesses if I'm being honest, but I wish there was more of a gradient between "win 75% of the time" to "lose 90% of the time".

Their matchmaking needs some serious work (granted they still suck at it with hots), because I was pushing a 65% winrate, and then couldn't get a team to save my life and plummeted to 52% while barely being able to eek out a win where I was losing near 90% of the games. I don't even mind losing, but the fact that it was just stomping after stomping really put me off. And apparently this is fairly common to not have close matches.

I'm in a similar position. My win/loss ratio was 64% at the weekend. Next day, I got roflstomped over and over. Including one match defending in Hanamura, the enemy captured both points with more than 8 minutes remaining. There was no tactic I could employ, no hero I could switch to that could halt their advance.

To me, that's seemed like a fairly standard early-MMR thing. It's always settled down at ~50% of games won, but in the initial "learning" phases, the pendulum swings hard and then has to overcorrect while it's trying to settle down to your final MMR. After about two such oscillations (too easy --> too hard --> too easy --> too hard), it has generally calmed down and given more balanced games, though as with anything pseudo-random there's still occasional salt/tilt-inducing streaks.

existential_elevator wrote:It's like a jigsaw puzzle of Hitler pissing on Mother Theresa. No individual piece is offensive, but together...

If you think hot women have it easy because everyone wants to have sex at them, you're both wrong and also the reason you're wrong.

I also think the number of heroes plays a part in it. Some people always play the same hero, thus if too many of them are in the same team you end up with two mccrees, a reaper and two hanzos, and get steamrolled because there's really nothing they can do to deal with well composed team with healers and tanks.

On the other hand, if you change characters to adapt to what the team needs, you're quite likely to occasionally end up playing someone you're not very good at.

I'm reasonably solid with Soldier 76, Pharrah, Lucio, Symmetra and Zarya, but can't hit the broad side of a barn with any of the snipers, my D.VA has an average of 1 kill per game, my Torbjorn is dismal, the only kills I get with Genji are bastions that never let go of the trigger, and so forth.

I edit my posts a lot and sometimes the words wrong order words appear in sentences get messed up.

D.Va is one of my best characters, and generally my default choice if I'm on the attacking side. Or if I'm bored with D.Va and we still need a tank, it's Winston. Charging in, going apeshit, being Winston.

I get what you're saying about if you swap characters, you might end up on a character you're not good at. But the whole point of the game is you're not supposed to stick with one character for an entire match, unless of course your first choice happens to be working really well. If you can get reasonably competent at one or two characters in each role, you'll be far better off than trying to master one or two characters overall.

For me, my go-to offence characters are Soldier 76 and Pharah, sometimes Reaper. My defence characters are Bastion and Torbjorn (although they pretty much do the same thing, so I should really learn a third defence character). My tanks are D.Va and Winston, occasionally Reinhardt if there's a Torbjorn or Bastion on my team. Support, I've mostly been playing Lucio, but now trying to git gud at Mercy, mostly because I got the devil skin for her.

I'm not the best player. My reflexes and aim just aren't as good as some others. But I'm great strategically. Matchmaking matches me with people of equal skill. Which means people with far superior aim, but who run around like headless chickens, with absolutely no game sense whatsoever. That's starting to get frustrating. Especially when playing support and trying to keep people alive.

If you're Reinhardt, would it kill you to just keep your shield up, and not charge solo into 5 enemies? No, it wouldn't kill you. In fact it would very much not kill you. And not kill the rest of us either.

I need more friends to play the game with, I guess is what I'm saying. Sadly none of my friends play the game.

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister

It's a "Lifesaver" POTG. If you watch, about when Bastion opens fire on the Roadhog, he's just hooked a Genji - and the Roadhog dies just before he's able to shoot the Genji in the face. You don't see a lot of Lifesaver POTGs, but that one may have counted as it was on the payload right before a checkpoint, which gives another boost (and, presumably, there weren't any super-huge plays in the rest of the game).

Most POTGs are just from generally doing a lot of damage/getting a lot of kills, especially on a point, but there's also Shutdown (kill an enemy who's about to deal a ton of damage with their ult - a Pharah who's just pressed Q, a McCree locking on, etc.), Lifesaver (for saving an ally from essentially certain death - stunning a charging Reinhardt who has them pinned, killing a Roadhog who has them hooked, etc.), and Sharpshooter (for exceptional long-ranged damage and accuracy) that can cause POTGs without that.

existential_elevator wrote:It's like a jigsaw puzzle of Hitler pissing on Mother Theresa. No individual piece is offensive, but together...

If you think hot women have it easy because everyone wants to have sex at them, you're both wrong and also the reason you're wrong.

DaBigCheez wrote:To me, that's seemed like a fairly standard early-MMR thing. It's always settled down at ~50% of games won, but in the initial "learning" phases, the pendulum swings hard and then has to overcorrect while it's trying to settle down to your final MMR. After about two such oscillations (too easy --> too hard --> too easy --> too hard), it has generally calmed down and given more balanced games, though as with anything pseudo-random there's still occasional salt/tilt-inducing streaks.

I would think that, but I'm over 200 games in and the matchmaking just seems to be getting worse. The matches used to be closer, but now they're becoming more one-sided even when I get the rare win.

DaBigCheez wrote:It's a "Lifesaver" POTG. If you watch, about when Bastion opens fire on the Roadhog, he's just hooked a Genji - and the Roadhog dies just before he's able to shoot the Genji in the face. You don't see a lot of Lifesaver POTGs, but that one may have counted as it was on the payload right before a checkpoint, which gives another boost (and, presumably, there weren't any super-huge plays in the rest of the game).

Most POTGs are just from generally doing a lot of damage/getting a lot of kills, especially on a point, but there's also Shutdown (kill an enemy who's about to deal a ton of damage with their ult - a Pharah who's just pressed Q, a McCree locking on, etc.), Lifesaver (for saving an ally from essentially certain death - stunning a charging Reinhardt who has them pinned, killing a Roadhog who has them hooked, etc.), and Sharpshooter (for exceptional long-ranged damage and accuracy) that can cause POTGs without that.

I've also seen a Merci POTG for resurrecting three people at once. I guess that falls under Lifesaver?

The POTG doesn't always make sense though. I've seen a few really underwhelming ones. Or ones based more on luck then skill. I got one as pharah when I was blindly spamming rockets into an alley knowing the enemy was likely to show up there, and got a triple-kill. Fun times

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister